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Connecting with today’s new socially-enabled buyer, or “Customer 2.0”, has become especially challenging for B2B sales organizations. And along with the web increasingly becoming the preferred channel for customers to do their research and shopping, having a functional website has become not just an option, but a necessity. Yet, B2B websites still have basic inbound marketing and SEO problems that are unwavering in holding back their success.
So without further ado, he are 5 key website optimization issues most commonly made by B2B websites:
- Duplicate Content – Search engines love unique content. Search engines do not like duplicate content that has been indexed elsewhere on your site or on external sites. The last two statements are basic SEO 101, yet B2B websites across the board have this issue. Do you consistently use a piece of text such as a product description, company description or boilerplate across your site on almost every page? These are just a few examples of duplicate content, a major problem that can get your site or pages of your site filtered out of search engines’ indexes – meaning your page will not show up in search results.
- Duplicate Title Tags – The title tag is an HTML title element critical to both SEO and user experience that is used to briefly and accurately describes the topic and theme of an online document (more details here). It is one of the most important on-page SEO factors and one of, if not, the easiest to update. Yet, browsing through most B2B websites, you can find a section where the title tag is repeated through dozens or hundreds of pages. Those pages could drive traffic and earn links if they were optimized and ranking on search engines.
- Optimizing for Industry Jargon – This is a typical B2B website mistake. Businesses try and rank for the keywords they think their customers are using to search for them. The key point is businesses use what they think visitors search for, when in reality using the terms they call their products. Instead of optimizing for the generic, basic searches that have exceedingly high search volume (for example: laser cutting or metal fabrication), businesses are ranking for terms that have minimal search volume because only people in the industry use the specific keywords (for example: precision bending, oxy-burning, robotic welding). Tip: find keyword search volumes here.
- Lack of Conversion Optimization – Try this test. Start at your company website and browse through 3-4 pages as if you were a new visitor. Think about each page you visited. Did they each have a call to action to act on something (application form, phone number, download, etc)? Did you understand the purpose of the page (drive visitors to download, educational content with product promoted in relevant content, etc)? Was there anything compelling that made you want to convert into a lead? Chances are most websites won’t go 3-3. Each page should have a purpose with a target audience and the content and conversion points of the page should be optimized.
- Lack of Social Media Interaction – Most companies are warming up to the fact that social media has taken over the web and is a necessary component of every business nowadays. The problem is, after a business has created a Twitter and Facebook page the social media interaction seems to stop or severely slow down. Tweet a few times a week, add fans on Facebook and add social sharing widgets to your site and promote sharing! The more shares your site and content receives, the more brand awareness your raise, and your content could end up landing in the hands of your future customer.
http://www.insideview.com/customer-20.html
The title tag is an HTML title element critical to both SEO and user experience that is used to briefly and accurately describes the topic and theme of an online document.
The title tag is displayed in two key places:
- Internet Browser – Title Tags display in the top bar of internet browsers.
- Search Result Pages – Search engines display title tags in their results along with another less important on-page factor, the meta description tag.
Importance for SEO:
Historically, the title tag has consistently been one of the single most important on-page SEO factors. Before search engine algorithms increased their complexity, the title tag was an easy way to try and determine the topic and relevancy of a page. As search engines evolved, their algorithms started to include additional factors such as link data, social media interaction and traffic/performance metrics. The title tag, however, still holds great value for on-page search engine optimization.
According to SEOmoz’s annual Search Ranking Factors survey of 37 influential thought leaders in the SEO industry, 35 of the 37 participants said that keyword usage in the title tag was the most important place to use keywords to achieve high rankings.
Creating Optimized Title Tags
Title tags are one of the best return on investment SEO techniques because they are a low effort and high return task. Most blogging platforms like WordPress and Drupal either provide built in solutions or downloadable add-ons to provide access to create and edit title tags.
Optimization Tips:
- Be Accurate – Try not to wonder off topic with your title tags as they are used as a relevancy factor to describe a page in search engine algorithms. Stray too far off the path and you may look like you’re spamming, keyword stuffing or other manipulative techniques.
- Don’t Target Too Many Terms on One Page – A good rule of thumb is to try not to target more than a couple keywords per page. If you could create a standalone article on the topic, it should be its own page. This method allows search engines to more easily determine the topic and relevancy of your page.
- Optimize Your Length for Results Pages – Search engines standardize their results pages by limiting the amount of characters they show per element of a listing. Title tags are allowed a maximum of 70 characters is the maximum amount of characters before they display an ellipsis – “…” to signify that a title tag has been cut off. Your title tag may not make sense to a user if it gets cut off before the point is made, so be sure to check title tag length. Additionally, don’t go overboard with keywords and use common sense to know what looks too long.
- Keyword Placement and Order Matters – According to SEOmoz’s survey, the earlier the keyword is used in the placement of the title tag, the more helpful it is for ranking factors. Additionally, because it is near the beginning and likely not cut off at the 70 character limit, the more likely a user will see it and click on your search result listing.
- Try to Be Enticing – Your title tag is a searcher’s first impression with your page and sometimes brand. Leverage the title tag to not only optimize for SEO but also for user experience. Studies have shown that the message you convey in your title tag can get your more traffic than the search result listing ranked above you. Think of the following example – which one would you click on?:
Option A: Digital Cameras – Company Name
Option B: Buy Digital Cameras and Accessories – Limited 20% off – Company Name
Search Engine Result Pages
One last thing to note is that any keywords in title tags, meta descriptions and display URLs that match the performed search query will be bolded on the search results page. With searchers using title tags to determine which listing they click on, an optimized and enticing title tag can increase click-through rates and greater brand awareness.
Engaging with today’s new breed of socially-enabled buyer, or Customer 2.0, has become increasingly difficult for B2B sales and marketing organizations. Traditional marketing tactics have become increasingly ineffective. Inbound marketing, which is focused on generating relevant content that results in “getting found” by customers vs. the other way around, has brought new life for marketing. Similarly, B2B sales organizations are adopting inbound selling (a.k.a. social selling) to drive prospect engagement in the latter stages of the buying process.
Getting found requires not only relevant content but also good visibility on search engines (which is where most customers begin their research.) Making your content visible to Google and other search engines requires SEO (search engine optimization.) SEO is often confused with online marketing and inbound selling, but is in fact a very distinct discipline. As we’ve explained in a previous post, the equation for getting found looks something like this:
SEO + Inbound Marketing = Getting Found (by search engines AND customers)
So without further ado, he are 20 key SEO terms that inbound marketing professionals must understand:
301 Redirect – A redirect is a technique for forwarding one URL to another URL. It’s a useful and dangerous tool to seamlessly forward visitors and search engine spiders to a new URL for one of several reasons including if a website needed to change its domain or a time sensitive page like a contest has expired and is no longer relevant. 301 redirects, unlike 302 redirects, also transfer PageRank and SEO value to the new URL.
Breadcrumb – A breadcrumb is a navigational trail used on web pages to display where the page sits in the hierarchy of the website. Each level of the breadcrumb is usually a link back to the referenced page. An example breadcrumb looks like this: “Home > Category > Product Page”
Canonical – Similar to the 301 redirect, URL canonicalization is an HTML tag to help eliminate duplicate copies of the same page on a website. Unlike redirects, canonical URL tags are only used for search engine spiders to signal that the duplicate pages have a single source.
Co-citation – Co-citations are links used to establish similarity between two web pages. If sites A and B are either linked to or cited by site C, then they may be related to each other even though they may not directly link to each other. For an example, say your blog about banking is linked to from 1,000 other websites that also link to WellsFargo.com. Search engines will use the existence of 1,000 co-citations to establish relevance between your blog and Wells Fargo.
CSS – CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is part of HTML code that outline the layout of different elements of your site such as your header, content area, widgets, etc.
Image Alt Text – Alt tags are used in the HTML code to describe images on a web page. Since search engines cannot see images, the use alt text along with other factors to determine what the image is and how relevant it is. An example of alt text: <img src="image24094.gif" alt=”Latest picture of BP oil spill“>
Inbound Link – An inbound link is a link from an external site to your site. An example would be if Site A adds a link to Site B on its homepage. Site B would have an inbound link from Site A. To see how many inbound links your site or page has, use the Yahoo! Site Explorer tool.
Indexed Pages – Indexed pages refers to the number of pages of your site that search engines have found, crawled and stored in their index. A page cannot rank for a search term unless it is in the search engine index.
Internal Links – Unlike inbound links, internal links is a link from one page on your site to another page on your site. An example would be if Site A added a link to the About Us page from the homepage of Site A. Internal links are valuable for SEO, although not considered to carry the same weight as an inbound link from an external source.
Long Tail – Long tail refers to uncommon search queries, generally phrases that are 3+ keywords in length. Popularized by Chris Anderson, long tail refers to the statistical probability distribution that there is a larger share of traffic to be gained by targeting the large number of uncommonly searched queries as opposed to the few, but wildly competitive and highly trafficked head terms.
NoFollow – A link element used in the HTML code of a link to tell search engines to not pass any SEO value or PageRank through the link. It was created to prevent spam in blog comments that the blog author could not control. An example of the nofollow code: <a href=”http://www.example.com/” rel=”nofollow”>discount drugs</a>
NoIndex – Noindex is a HTML tag that tells search engine spiders to prevent storing the page in a search engine index. It can be used for private information that you would not want anyone to find through a search engine. Found in the <head> section of the web page, an example code looks like: <meta content=”noindex” />
Outbound Link – An outbound link is a link from your site to an external site. An example would be if Site A adds a link to Site B on its homepage. Site A would have an outbound link to Site B.
PageRank – Is a link analysis algorithm, assigning a numerical weighting for the total value and trust accumulated by your entire site (all pages) based on the quantity and quality of the links pointed at your site. Links are used by the search engines as the main factor determining trust, relevancy and the importance of a page and domain based on the quantity and quality of the links that point to it. Every link on the web is treated as a “vote” and that the more votes a page has, the more value its vote’s pass.
Robots.txt – Robots.txt is a protocol that determines the accessibility of specific pages on a domain to search engine spiders. The robots.txt file tells search engine spiders which pages to disallow any crawling or indexing before the spider even reaches the page. Try typing in any domain followed by /robotx.txt and see one for yourself: http://www.google.com/robots.txt
Spider – A search engine spider is an automated program, known as a robot or crawler, that navigates through the web, crawling and indexing content from sites into a search engine index.
Subdomain – A subdomain is a domain that is part of a larger domain. An example would be Money.CNN.com is a subdomain of www.CNN.com. Subdomains are treated as separate sites from the larger domain it’s a part of and do not carry over the SEO value from its parent domain.
Subfolder – A subfolder is a folder or path contained within a domain. An example would be www.google.com/adsense is a subfolder to www.google.com. Subfolders are treated as the same site as the parent domain and carry over all SEO value.
Title Tag – Title tags are HTML tags in the code of a web page that define the title of the page. Title tags are displayed in the menu bar of internet browsers and on search engine results pages with a short meta description snippet. They are one of the most important on-page factors for SEO.
WHOIS – WHOIS is a query protocol to determine who the owner of a website is. Many resources are available to search WHOIS records such as Network Solutions. Private registrations can be used to hide contact information for WHOIS records.
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The world cup is the largest sporting event of the year, with FIFA estimates of over 5 billion people watching worldwide. It’s no wonder how fans across the world can get caught up in the excitement and glory. The economic downside, you might ask? Try $121 Million in the US (just think what it could have been if they had continued onto the quarterfinals.) And the biggest loser, both in national pride and economic productivity, will be the U.K. with an estimated $7.3 Billion in lost productivity. Blimey!
Check out our visual guide to productivity loss from hours of employees watching, tracking, and analyzing the World Cup during business hours. Infographic Design by Lissette Arias
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How many Google searches do you perform each day as part of your lead generation and qualification process? And how often do you have to change your search to find what you were really looking for? For those sales people who don’t have access to an enterprise sales intelligence application and rely on free resources like Google, there are a lot of inefficient searches performed every day. What many people may not know is that Google actually has advanced search capabilities that act as shortcuts to find the right information you need. The list below is not comprehensive, but I’ll guarantee they’ll change the way you listen, connect and engage with Customer 2.0.
Here they are, your Top 5 Advanced Search Tips for Better Prospecting:
#1 Exact Match Searches
A normal search in Google returns the most relevant results to your search term. But let’s say you are looking for something that exactly matches a specific keyword or phrase. Enclose your search phrase in double quotations and you’ll get just that – only exact match results.
Example: Symantec “CMO”
This search would return results related to the company Symantec but have the word “CMO” on the page. A good way to do reputation management for your product or service or find recent news regarding a specific topic.
#2 Keyword Exclusions (Negative Keywords)
Say you want to do a search for a keyword or phrase but the results include lots of unrelated results. All you have to do is include a few negative keywords to exclude those results from showing up by using the minus sign (-) followed by your keyword with no space in between.
Example: Walmart Competitors -Target
This search will display all results related to the company Walmart, except for any result related to the company Target.
#3 Site Specific Searches
Looking for a page on a site but can’t seem to find it? Look no further than the site search command (site:example.com) and search only the input site. Take it a step further and include a keyword of your topic with the site search and narrow your results.
Example: site:www.insideview.com Executive Team
This search will display all results on www.insideview.com related to our Executive Team.
#4 Synonyms and Modifiers
Say you want to do a search for a product that goes by a few names including synonyms, similar words, etc. Instead of searching multiple times, use the synonym (~) or dynamic modifier (*) to combine results.
Examples:
Synonym Search: New ~executive at SolarWinds
This search will find results related to the new hire at SolarWinds and all synonyms and similar words related to executive including CEO, CMO, exec, etc.
Dynamic Modifier Search: IBM hires new *
This search will display results related to the newest IBM employee in the news. The asterisk represents any potential word. In this case it could be VP sales, CMO, Director, etc.
#5 Similar Sites
Want to find similar or related sites to a prospect, competitor or partner? Use the “related:” search command to do just that.
Example: related:finance.yahoo.com
This search will display the most similar sites (according to Google) related to finance.yahoo.com. Results include Nasdaq, MarketWatch and Bloomberg.
#5.5 The Combo
I know the title says top 5, but I threw this one in here for fun. The combo is typically only used by advanced web users and SEO experts, but it’s extremely valuable once you get the hang of it. The combo uses any and all of the above advanced queries into one monster search to find anything you want.
Example: “Google” ~executive -www.google.com salary
This search will display results about the salary of Google’s executive team (including synonyms such as CEO, Chief, execs, etc) on all sites other than Google.com.
Starting a new site, taking on an existing project or performing a new role, search engine optimization can be a daunting task if you don’t have a lot of experience. Everyone has to start somewhere and with the use of automated tools and web based services, you can learn SEO fairly quickly and start to yield pretty amazing results with hard work and dedication.
1. SEO Plug-ins
- Extensions – SEO for Firefox – With usage statistics of over 130,000 webmasters, SEO for Firefox is one of the most popular SEO plug-ins on the web. This tool displays metrics directly into a search engine result page based off of your selected criteria. You can breakdown the PageRank, site age, total links, etc for sites 1 through 10 and gain some competitive intelligence all on your search results page.
- WordPress – All-in-One SEO Pack – does a great job for those wanting to optimize their WordPress blog without putting in all the effort of multiple plug-ins and extensions. Optimize title tags, no-indexed page logic, and page structure with ease. Those looking for a little deeper dive check out a more extensive list of WordPress plug-ins from Michael Gray.
- Joomla – Site Management Plugins – Over 200+ plug-ins can be found in Joomla’s extensions community. Top picks are sh404SEF, Title Manager and SEO Canonicalization Plug-in.
- Drupal – Scribe SEO Analyzer – Labeled as a content optimization assistant, Scribe SEO Analyzer helps tweak content, keywords, site structure and link with a click of a button. A must-have for Drupal.
2. Xenu Link Sleuth
Xenu finds broken links, 301 redirects, a high level overview of your site taxonomy, title tags used and site map all in a nice, easy-to-use interface and reporting system that can be emailed or downloaded.
3. Yahoo Site Explorer & Open Site Explorer
The two best free link analysis tools on the web – the legendary, but fading Yahoo! Site Explorer and the SEOmoz’s Open Site Explorer. Research and discover all the links pointing towards your site, the keywords and phrases used in the link anchortext, strength of sites linking to you and how valuable each link really is to your site.
Take it a step further and use these link intelligence tools to their full potential by comparing your site to your competitors to discover potential link targets, areas of improvement on your site and weaknesses to target based on your competitor’s link metrics.
4. SEO Toolbars
Toolbars are a great way for users to get easy access to SEO metrics and research tools all-in-one place in your browser. Instead of visiting 10 sites and tools, toolbars aggregate everything to get your link metrics, competitive data and more with the click of a button.
- SEOBook – Created by the ever popular SEO Aaron Wall, the free SEOBook SEO toolbar provides everything you need to know about a website and more in a toolbar. Discover link information, advanced metrics such as directory and social media interaction, a built in RSS feed reader, keyword research tools and great tools like the Compare Websites competition checker and Rank Checker, a search engine ranking tool.
- SEOmoz – Created by the just as popular SEO company SEOmoz, their “mozBar” is also free and provides similar features as SEOBook’s toolbar. However, instead of aggregating from multiple third party sources, SEOMoz has creating their own link and web index allowing them to generate their own proprietary link count, page value and ranking and weighting system.
- Web Developer Toolbar – This toolbar was specifically made for web developers, but it’s so useful that it’s essential to any SEO as well. Discover the technical side of SEO with the web developer toolbar by disabling JavaScript, CSS and Images to see what your site really looks like to search engine spiders. With the click of a button resize your browser to different sizes, view DIV order, outline header tags or display image alt tags across the entire page.
5. Keyword Research Tools
Discover estimated traffic volumes for keywords and phrases so you can optimize for how visitors are actually searching for products and services in your industry.
- Google Keyword Tool External – Google’s free keyword research tool that is a part of their AdWords platform. Discover the broad, phrase and exact match volumes according to Google (with a little skewing), find related synonyms, filter by adult content and more.
- Wordtracker – With a free and paid version of their keyword research tool, Wordtracker is one of the main web-based keyword analysis services on the web. Using data from metacrawlers instead of search engines, they do make an assumption that the keyword usage and volume are very similar to search engines. Use Wordtracker to find search volumes, related keywords and other KPI’s such as their “keyword effectiveness index” which weights and ranks keywords by ease of optimization based on search volume and competiveness.
- Keyword Discovery – The other big keyword research competitor, Keyword Discovery, also offers a free and paid version of their tool. With data aggregated from over 200 search engines worldwide, they claim to have a database of over 38 billion search updated monthly. Perform keyword research, look for related industry keywords, spelling mistake optimization as well as seasonal search trends and KEI metrics.
